Acting on the number of call drop complaints that received against a number of leading telecom operators in the country, TRAI has released its report on the performance parameters of various leading telecom operators in the country.

TRAI had received maximum complaints against Bharti Airtel followed by other telcos like Vodafone, Idea, and BSNL up to 30 June, told the telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to the Lok Sabha.

As per the TRAI benchmarks, the call drop rate for any telecom operator in India should always be less than 2%, but it’s more than that for a majority of telecom operators.

Percent Call Drop Rates Of Each Operator

We have calculated the call drop rates of all operators in the circle of Mumbai and Delhi. Here they are:

Operators

Delhi – Call Drop Rates (%)

Mumbai – Call Drop Rates (%)

Aircel

5.18

3.19

Airtel

8.04

0.97

Idea

2.84

5.56

Reliance GSM

17.29

2.29

Tata

CDMA- 0.84

GSM- 5.51

Vodafone

4.28

4.83

“They failed to achieve the benchmarks due to high block call rate, high drop call rate, low call setup success rate and poor Rx quality,” mentioned TRAI in its report.”

The report released by TRAI is based on network tests conducted by TRAI team from 23-24 June in Mumbai and from 9-11 July in Delhi.

Bharti Airtel emerged as the best operator with lowest call drops (0.97%) in Mumbai whereas Tata CDMA came forth as the operator with lowest call drop rates (0.84%) in Delhi.

TRAI also tested the mobile networks for various other important parameters like Coverage, Accessibility, Retainability, Mobility, Rx Quality, and C/I (Career to Interference ratio).

Overall Results of Network Tests

Here is the overall network quality analysis of various operators covering all the main network parameters:

New Delhi

Mumbai

To make the testing a normalized one, the team selected the road routes based on several factors like areas of frequent call drop complaints and heavy usage, residential and office areas, etc. To cover both peak and off-peak network usage hours, the tests were performed between 9 am and 7:30 pm.

It is worth noting that none of the operator had consistent and low call drop rates in both the test telecom circles of Delhi and Mumbai.

Bharti Airtel had the lowest call drop rates of 0.97% in Delhi but it increased drastically to 8.04% in Delhi. Tata CDMA provided a very low call drop rate of 0.84% in Delhi, but it increased to 5.51% for its GSM network in Mumbai.

Vodafone India had the most consistent value of call drop rates (4.2-4.8%) but unfortunately that it way too outside the prescribed range of 0-2%.

Our Advice

If you reside in these telecom circles, then we would advise you to choose your next telecom operator very carefully after checking the full report for network quality parameters.

And since this network quality data is made public now, we expect all telecom operators in the country to improve their networks for meeting TRAI benchmarks as well as for the betterment of their subscribers.

[…] December, we had reported that call drops have increased by 25%, and TRAI had demanded strict action. In case any telecom company refuses to pay for the call drop, then TRAI will take strict action […]